Roll-around cabinets for storage of the tools of mechanics are well known and usually are used in conjunction with a tool chest, having multiple pull out drawers in its front wall. Such roll around cabinets have an upper surface equal in width to the width of the tool chest but of greater depth so that the chest may extend across the rear of the cabinet surface with a portion, such as a 6 inch wide strip exposed at the front to serve as a work bench. However, if tools or work pieces are supported thereon, the lowermost drawer in the chest cannot be pulled out without danger of knocking the work bench parts onto the floor.
The work bench area on the upper surface of such cabinets is thus not only impractical to use but it is of too small an area to permit any work of any size to be accomplished thereon.
Tool chests have been proposed in which there is built in space below the level of the bottommost pull-out drawer, that space being occupied by a front cover when not in use, as in U.S. Pat. No. 1,984,345 to Kennedy of Dec. 11, 1934. However, most tool chests do not have such space below the bottom drawer because it is more efficient to use such space for tools and parts.
It has also been proposed to provide storage space below the bottom drawer of a roll-around tool cabinet as in U.S. Pat. No. 2,981,549 to Hotton of Apr. 25, 1961, but such space proximate floor level does not produce any increased work bench area at waist level.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,903,316 to Schmidt of Sept. 8, 1959, a skeletonized support structure is disclosed for elevating a tool chest above a surface but the two upright end brackets must be affixed to the side edges of the top by screws and a rear bracket must be similarly affixed. While such a structure provides work space under the tool chest, it is not easily removable, it does not form a sheet metal storage enclosure and it includes no built-in slidable shelf for increasing the work bench area.